Varanasi diary

The Queue That Whispers Everything Human

I was leaning against the warm stone wall near the Vishwanath Temple corridor, watching the queue snake like a living thing – slow, patient, unstoppable. It was late afternoon, the kind of heat that makes your shirt stick to your back, but nobody in the line seemed to mind. They had surrendered to the wait hours ago.

An old woman in a faded green sari was fanning herself with the edge of her pallu. I fell into step beside her.

“First time, beta?” she asked without looking at me.

“No, Aunty. I just… never stand in it. I usually touch the outer wall and run.”

She laughed, a dry crackle. “Arti-style. “Same disease. My knees won’t forgive me if I stand four hours. But this time my grandson wrote from America – ‘Dadi, one darshan for my Green Card interview.’ So here I am, trading knees for visa.”

A young man ahead of us turned. Early twenties, thin beard, nervous eyes, carrying a steel lota like it was made of glass.

“Green Card is easy, Auntyji,” he said. “Try asking Baba for a boy who earns thirty lakhs but still listens to his mother.”

The old woman cackled. “Thirty lakhs and listens to mother? You’ll need the special VIP queue for that miracle, son.”

The boy blushed. “Actually… I’m here for something else.” He lowered his voice. “My parents don’t know I’m… you know… I like boys. They keep sending biodatas of girls. I thought if I ask Baba to change me normal…”

The words hung in the hot air like incense smoke.

The old woman didn’t flinch. She just looked at him for a long second, then reached out and patted his arm, gently, like he was made of porcelain.

“Beta,” she said softly, “Baba has bigger things to fix than who you love. You ask him for courage instead. The rest will follow.”

The boy’s eyes filled. He couldn’t speak, just nodded, clutching his lota tighter.

A foreign couple – tall, sunburnt, backpacks the size of small elephants – squeezed past us toward Dashashwamedh Ghat for the evening Aarti. The girl had henna on her hands that was already flaking. Her boyfriend was filming everything on a GoPro like the city might vanish if he stopped recording.

I caught up with them near the steps.

“First Aarti?” I asked.

The girl – Freya from Sweden – grinned. “Third night in a row. We can’t stop coming. It’s like… church, but with fire and drums and zero guilt.”

Her boyfriend, Lukas, lowered the camera. “Back home, religion is quiet. Here it’s loud and sweaty and everyone is shouting at God like He’s hard of hearing. I love it.”

We found a spot on the upper steps. Below us, the river was black and gold, reflecting a thousand small oil lamps that people were already floating. The priests were warming up – testing microphones, adjusting the giant lamps like rock stars tuning guitars.

A sadhu with ash-smeared chest sat cross-legged near us, smoking a chillum. Freya, fearless, offered him a biscuit from her packet. He took it solemnly, broke it in half, gave her one piece back.

“Share with Ganga,” he rasped in English. “Everything shared becomes holy.”

Lukas laughed. “Do Indians really believe the river is their mother?”

The sadhu exhaled a blue cloud. “Do Swedes really believe IKEA is furniture?”

Freya burst out laughing so hard she almost fell into the lap of a Marwari family behind us.

Down on the platform, the Aarti began. Seven young priests in saffron robes, synchronized like dancers, swinging fire in perfect circles. The bells went mad. Conches moaned. The crowd – thousands strong – roared back with claps and cries of “Har Har Mahadev!”

I looked around. The boy from the queue was there, lota abandoned somewhere, eyes shining, clapping with everyone else. The old woman stood near the front, hands folded, lips moving silently – maybe for the grandson’s Green Card, maybe for the boy’s courage, maybe for her knees.

Freya had tears running down her cheeks, mascara making little rivers. Lukas had stopped filming. Even the sadhu was swaying, chillum forgotten.

And for those forty minutes, the city stopped pretending.

No one was asking for jobs or marriages or cures or to be “fixed.”

They were just standing in firelight, singing to a God who – if the old woman was right – already knew everything they were too afraid to say out loud.

When the last lamp was offered to the river and the priests bowed, the crowd didn’t rush away like they usually do in temples. They lingered. Someone started singing Bhajan. Others joined. Even Freya hummed along, murdering the tune gloriously.

I walked back through the lanes alone. A kachori seller on the corner recognized me from previous trips.

“Extra mirch wala?” he asked, already frying.

“Double,” I said.

He grinned. “Baba blessed you tonight?”

I thought of the boy finding courage, the old woman trading knees for love, the foreigners crying into the Ganga, the sadhu sharing his biscuit.

I took the paper plate, steam rising like incense.

“Yeah,” I said. “He always does. Just never the way we expect.”